Follow the topics within this article

The rights group said in a statement that Turkish border guards in March and April used excessive force against Syrians and a smuggler trying to reach Turkey, killing five people, including a child and injuring 14 others.

Six of the incidents took place near the Khurbat al Juz-Güveççi border crossing, around 30 miles south of the Turkish city of Antakya.

Footage obtained by Human Rights Watch appeared to show the corpses of a man and a woman shot dead, as well as deep welts on the torsos of people who said they had been beaten in custody.

An eyewitness to the deaths of a Syrian man and woman on April 17 near the Khurbat al Juz-Güveççi crossing said their group had met with a hail of bullets as they approached the border.

“The women started screaming and the children started crying, but the shooting continued. We all threw ourselves onto the ground, covering the children. I was lying close to my sister and my cousin, and the bullets hit them while we were lying down,” he said. “They stopped screaming and shouting. I knew right away they had been killed.”

Six years into the Syrian civil war, Turkey says it is currently hosting 2.7 million refugees.

In mid-April, guards blocked thousands of fleeing displaced persons after their camps near the border had been hit by artillery fire.

A 35-year-old man from the west Syrian city of Homs told the Telegraph that he had been thrashed and kicked in detention, then shot in the back of the leg as he trudged back to the war he had just left.

“I was just 15 metres away,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity from a hospital bed in the south Turkish town of Kilis.

His doctor said he was left bleeding on the ground for hours before a medics were called to bring him across the border for treatment. Requests for comment on the part of the Turkish authorities went unanswered.